Caroline Kuzemko, Michael F. Keating and Andreas Goldthau

This chapter makes the case for nexus thinking in the study of the international political economy of energy and resources, that is their inter-dependencies with other policy areas. It argues that it is imperative to go beyond an IPE of ‘just energy’ – rather than treating it as truly ‘discrete’ – to understand energy and resources as part of dynamic inter-relationship with other issue areas. In addition to the ones related to climate change, security and development, nexuses as identified in the chapter include the energy–technology nexus, the energy–water nexus, the energy–food nexus, or the global–local nexus in energy, all of which are increasingly identified within some global and national governance organisations and within recent scholarship. The chapter suggests that from a scholarly point of view this establishes energy as a highly complex, interconnected policy area – both in terms of how energy markets and technical regimes are constituted, their implications for other issue areas, and in terms of the extent to which governance institutions are being designed that stretch across these issue areas. Moreover, the chapter makes the case for the ‘IPE toolkit’ being well equipped to capture energy nexuses in their various forms and shapes. Finally, the chapter lays out the structure and the content of the Handbook.

Carbon Taxes, Energy Subsidies and Smart Instrument Mixes

Janet E. Milne

While carbon tax measures have not yet met with success at the federal level in the United States, proposals for carbon taxes emerged in a handful of states in 2015 and 2016. The proposals address the shared challenge of climate change, but each has its own unique features and setting. Drawing on proposals in Oregon, Massachusetts, Vermont and Washington as case studies, this chapter explores how state constitutions can affect the design of state-level carbon taxes and their legislative route toward enactment. For example, the Oregon constitution imposes limits on tax rates and use of the revenue when taxing certain fossil fuels. The constitutions in three of the four states require that some types of revenue measures must originate in the legislative House of Representatives, not the Senate, raising the question whether carbon taxes can be designed in a manner that will avoid this procedural constraint. In Washington, the carbon tax proposal came forward as a ballot initiative that went to voters in the general election, following a procedure permitted under the state constitution. These case studies serve as an important reminder of how constitutional provisions that were not created with climate change in mind can influence the design features of subnational carbon taxes and political strategies.

Prices, Production and Consumption

Basil Oberholzer

This chapter is an introduction to the most important topics regarding the crude oil market. Several data and facts of the market are briefly presented. An outstanding feature of crude oil at the core of public debates is its character as a fossil and non-renewable fuel. The chapter enlightens what this means in economic terms and how it is connected to the investigation at hand. As another issue, recent research on the oil market has, to a great part, focused on the driving forces of the oil price. In particular, our interest is in the question of whether economic fundamentals are the only factors influencing the price or whether speculation may also be effective. Finally, the role of OPEC and its potential power to impact on the oil market is considered.

Comparing Europeanization and Domestic Policy Change in EU Member States

Helge Jörgens and Israel Solorio

Chapter 1 presents the analytical framework used throughout the book to study how renewable energy policies in the EU member states emerged and have changed throughout the past three decades. In order to study renewable energy policymaking in the European Union (EU) and its member states and to untangle the complex policy processes that surround it, the authors draw on the Europeanization framework as their principal analytical tool. Adopting a Europeanization perspective allows emphasis to be put not only on the domestic drivers of national policy change, but also on the (sometimes neglected) role of the EU in renewable energy sources promotion. It also directs the analytical focus to the interactive nature of EU policymaking, characterized by an interdependent mix of uploading, downloading and cross-loading of policies and programmes between the European and the national levels and across EU member states. In order to adequately account for the multiplicity of factors that drive policy change in the European multi-level polity, the authors distinguish between three types of Europeanization – bottom-up, top-down, and horizontal – all of which prove to be relevant in some countries or at some point in time. By explicitly adding a horizontal dimension, the analytical framework goes beyond traditional concepts of Europeanization as a two-way process where member state governments either shape European policy outcomes (bottom-up Europeanization) or adapt to them (top-down Europeanization). Keywords: bottom-up Europeanization, Europeanization, horizontal Europeanization, policy diffusion, renewable energy policy, top-down Europeanization